 With a car accident - your head will continue to move forwards as it takes a few microseconds for your neck muscles to react and stop this movement. The muscles have to work extremely hard to stop your head and protect your neck and often your ligaments will also be stressed, especially with higher speed crashes.
Consequently the muscles, ligaments and joints can become extremely sore and stiff. Even what appear to be relatively minor car accidents can cause a whiplash due to the forces involved in these sort of accidents. Symptoms can include: Pain in the neck and/or upper back. Tenderness to touch in these regions. Restriction in the range of movement in your neck. Headaches and Dizziness. Jaw Pain - as a result of the seat belt holding your chest stationary as your neck quickly moves, or by grinding your teeth at night due to pain in other areas and or stress from the injury. Blurred Vision. * Symptoms can take up to 2 weeks to appear after a car accident * Yes I can help with your neck pain, headaches, jaw pain from a whiplash injury How can Physio Help? We can help you day 1 of your car accident. We have great machines that help reduce the inflammation and thus the pain. Ice immediately, 20 min every 2hours. Gentle physiotherapy techniques are used to regain your normal range of movement and help ease any pain. Then clients are guided by their physio to perform very gentle early movement and postural exercises to prevent stiffness from developing and to ensure the neck is functioning correctly. Leigh can advise which exercises are appropriate and when they should be commenced to prevent long term pain. We can refer for scans and will send you back to your doctor for prescription medications if your pain is not settling within the first week. Call Now On 9315 3855 to see Leigh TODAY!
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 It is NOT normal for your jaw to click
and yes you need Jaw Physio! WHY? I hear you say. (30% of the population will have a ''clicky jaw'' with no problems, ie pain or dysfunction, but how do you know if your ''clicky jaw'' is not going to develop into worse symptoms? If you have no pain with your click, Leigh can just see you for one session to give you some ''jaw Pilates'' exercises to make sure it does not get worse in your future.) It is usually due to some disruption of the joint surface, may that be;
How to prevent clicking:
When it is a mild click with no pain, it is usually simple and only needs a few sessions to correct. The more frequently it clicks, then develops pain and then starts to lock, you will obviously need more treatments. It is very rare for the clicking to go away by itself, as the jaw muscles spasm to try and protect this movement and end up tightening in an asymmetrical pattern (i.e. tighter muscles on one side of the jaw). So not only does the joint movement have to be encouraged to glide along the path of least resistance with no pain or clicking, but the muscles have to work equally and symmetrically as both jaws work as one. If you’re not sure, feel free to ring Leigh on 9315 3855 and ask her what you can do, or whether you need treatment. You don’t need a referral from your doctor to see Leigh, call for an appointment on 9315 3855.  Real Tinnitus in most medical texts and studies will tell you that it is not fully understood why ‘’ringing in the ears’’ occurs. It is a symptom, not a disease process itself. The most obvious cause is due to working around loud machinery or music. Therapy for tinnitus is; seeing your GP and audiologist, and re-training therapy (which includes therapeutic noise generators and hearing aids) and counseling. Some people it just effects at night (as they can ignore it during a normal busy day), the best background/quiet music to help you sleep is classical music.
Pseudo Tinnitus – ie clients who have TMJ symptoms have a greater chance of suffering from tinnitus. There are a few theories that TMJ suffers have tinnitus due some of the jaw muscles sit close to the middle ear muscles and can pull the ear drum tighter causing ringing noise. Or that connections between ligaments that attach to the jaw also attach to one of the hearing bones in the middle ear. Or the nerve supply to the TMJ is similar to the ear and the part of the brain that interprets sound, which could aggravate pre-existing tinnitus. However ask any physio or massage therapist and we also have big theories too!! And many of the neck muscles that attach onto the mastoid process also create tinnitus symptoms, mostly SCM (sternocliedomastiod muscle). So if you get no relief from your GP/audiologist and a year of seeing if your brain will self resolve the problem by blocking it out, or accommodating to it, then see your expert Jaw Physio to see if it is your TMJ and surrounding jaw and neck muscles. One strange trick has helped some of my clients – they have put ear plugs in their ears, not to stop the noise, but to stretch out the muscles in the surrounding area, along with having physio on their jaw and neck. Icing the muscles around the jaw and neck can help, as this is usually an inflammatory process, heat packs will make it worse as they bring more blood supply to the area with the heat and increase the inflammatory products to the area. If it is just muscle spasm then heat. However, if it is muscle spasm and inflammation, and or synovitis, and or jaw disc protrusion/dislocation then you must only ICE, as heat will make it worse. Call 9315 3855 for an appointment.  Leigh had a client ring in May 2016 from Sydney requesting to fly over for treatment on a locked jaw since September 2015. She had seen oral facial surgeon and a physio (who only sees a few jaw clients a week – as opposed to a Jaw Physio who only see’s clients with head and jaw pain – like Leigh).
Leigh was able to reassure the client, and get her to go back to her surgeon and get an MRI and another referral to a physio who sees only jaws and head pain – phew! This is a common story, especially with young females or people who clench and grind their teeth day or night or both. Usually the client wakes with a locked jaw or when eating something hard or yawning and it makes a big cracking sound and then won’t open. The more often it locks the longer it takes to unlock, until one day it stays locked (i.e. less than 25mm in open from tooth tips – top to bottom, or less than one fingers opening – scary hey??!!) It is usually due to:
The disc is anchored on either side of the joint by ligaments and at the back of the mouth by its own fibres (called posterior lamina fibres). If you stretch these fibres when the disc is inflamed (the acute phase), they never go back to the same length (i.e. they are not elastic), this causes irreparable damage. So if you see a therapist / dentist / surgeon and they ask you to force your jaw open when the disc is in an acute phase of inflammation, you can do a lot of damage to this joint. How do you know it’s acute in its symptoms –
There is no other joint in the body that Physio’s, Chiro’s, or Osteo’s will force into opening, so why would you force a very fragile and important joint like your jaw open? As an expert in this field I think it is time to say it’s not a good idea! Most expert therapists in Jaw therapy have a few different treatment techniques that can gently get this joint to open without great force, so talk to your local jaw expert like Leigh !! If all else fails, you can then be referred for:
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AuthorExpert Jaw Physiotherapist, Leigh Ray can help with jaw pain, neck pain, headaches & migraines ArchivesCategories |
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